Candles
by Kimiz
Summary: Because with birthday candles come birthday wishes. And birthday candles never go out on the first blow.  Happy birthday to you.


**A/N**: This started as a oneshot because I wanted to do something for Sakura's birthday, because I think she's actually a nice character, and also, because her birthday is so close to mine, but as I wrote it along the day, I thought about all my favorite Naruto characters having birthdays and I thought, hell, let's make this a place to put all the birthday stories. So, yes, you may expect an update when one of our darlings gets a year older. It is sort of a character study, an analisis of their growing up as seen through birthdays along the years. I liked this style, and I think I'll keep it to the other birthday shots. Please, drop a review to tell me if I suck or not. It's much appreciated.

**Disclaimer: Naruto isn't mine. It's Kishimoto's. And he'd better start making relationships sprout across that battlefield, or elseee!**

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**Candles**

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**Sakura**

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Her mother woke her up with gentle clapping, softly singing '_happy birthday to you'. _Soon her father walked in with a pink glittery candle, lit and throwing sparks, the one she had been waiting for for months. Because with birthday candles came wishes, and birthday candles never go out on the first blow, and she was a little girl with many dreams. She squeezed her eyes together and scrunched her nose with the strength of her thinking. She wished, wished, and blew out. The flame flickered once, diminishing momentarily, while they waited in expectance until it finally burst to life again. Their little family cheered and she shut her eyes closed again, to ask the next thing on her wish list. She delighted in seeing the fire lighting up again. Once, twice, even a fourth time, and she squealed happily every time. She had asked practically everything now, a puppy, a little sister, a new dress, for her mommy and daddy to be happy forever. There was only one thing left now. She leaned back, giggling, waiting for the candle to light up again, but the flames had finally flickered out of existence. She pouted, but didn't remain upset too long, she had had a bunch of wishes afterall.

Such a pity making friends with the little black-eyed boy from the park was that far in her priorities.

But her mommy and daddy were there giving her hugs and kisses and handing her a box with a bow on top and she just knew it was the dress she had asked for, and she would get to show it to Ino later when she came over for the party, and she would say she looked pretty and help her do something on her hair, and then they could play with their dolls the whole day and eat her granny's special birthday cake until their bellies hurt.

All was well, and she was happy.

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She was twelve, staring at herself in the mirror, picking at her clothes and tugging at the strands of pink hair falling across her forehead. Her ridiculously huge forehead. She sighed dejectedly, leaving the mirror, dropping face-first into the bed, managing to hurt her nose in the process. She turned on her back, massaging the bridge of her nose absent-mindedly. It would be really brilliant if she ended up breaking it or something, and it turned crooked. It would be a perfect combination to her monstrous forehead. As if she wasn't ugly enough already.

She felt the tears prickling her eyes, though she tried to hold them back. Everything was just so wrong. It was her birthday, but it might as well have been just another day. She hadn't wanted a party with her family, she was too grown up for that, and her parents didn't let her throw the kind of party she wanted because they told her she was still too _young. _They had had a big fight over it until she stormed off to her room. They didn't understand. They thought she was still a baby who could stuff her face and play with toys and this sort of thing. They even thought she was still friends with Ino! They were just so clueless.

No one had bothered to congratulate her at the Academy. She doubted they even knew what day it was, it wasn't like any of the girls were really _friends_ with her, or with each other really. But they had studied together since they were six, surely _one _of them must have known, they could have been _nice_ and at least congratulated her. The only one who looked like she knew that it wasn't just Friday was Ino, and she hadn't exactly said 'happy birthday'. Though she supposed not calling her billboard brow was her own sort of birthday present.

Her thoughts went to her precious Sasuke-kun then. Where would he be at the moment? Did he know it was her birthday? Probably not. But it wasn't his fault, it was not like he didn't _care_, he was just too busy to pay attention to those kinds of things. Not even that annoying Naruto that was always running after her had congratulated her.

Everything was so _wrong_. Nobody should feel that bad on their birthday. She was all alone. No plans, no friends coming over, no candles to blow or birthday cake. Just a white ceiling staring back at her.

She had never felt so lonely.

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When she turned seventeen she was recovering from a war. She stayed at the hospital night and day, splicing one shift on the other and doing thirty-six hours with no more than a twenty minutes nap between one patient and the other. She hadn't seen actual sunlight in about two days, and the bags under her eyes had turned so purple they had finally become permanent. Her eyes burned from the white aritificial lights, her back hurt from the hard bed of the doctor's quarters and she hadn't seen her friends in weeks. The last time she had heard from any of them was when Kiba had shown up with a gaping hole on his stomach after a mission gone wrong, he wasn't exactly fit for chatting. He had disappeared right after he recovered too.

Not that she blamed him. It was just the way things were going at the moment. With a partially-destroyed village and economics in utter chaos there was work for a hundred being done by a thirty, it wasn't a surpise half of them ended up in her hands. It was rough for everyone, too much work and too little sleep, the pressure to finish it quickly just to go back and take more was overwhelming them all. It was starting to fray their nerves, and wear them down, but there was just _so much to do._

So it came as a real shock when she picked up a pile of the daily hospital records to analyze, and came across the date. March. Twenty-eighth. Her birthday.

Maybe it was the mental exhaustion, or all the pressure was finally frying her neurons, but her discovery made her want to laugh. What kind of miserable son of a bitch was so disgraceful to forget their own birthday? She chuckled once, shaking her head. She needed a break. But then again, so did the whole village. She rolled her shoulders to get the kinks out of her muscles, and picked up a pen. She sighed, glancing warily at the mountain of paperwork awaiting her.

"Happy birthday, Sakura." She told herself with a depressed smile.

She had barely touched the pen to the paper when the door to her office slammed open. She was about to chide the person for the rude entering, when the familiar face of her blonde friend came into view. Ino's pale blue eyes were wide and incredulous, it scared her. She opened her mouth to ask what happened, but the other girl cut her off.

"He's _here. _He's back." She said simply, shooting forward and dragging her until the window, throwing it open and pointing down.

A bloody and battered Naruto stood on the ground twenty feet below, hands on his hips and his big beaming grin, seemingly unaware of the half a dozen ANBU trailing behind him. He jerked his head to the right, eyes shining with happiness, and her heart skipped a beat at the sight of the beaten dark-haired beside him being restrained by one of the masked shinobi. He cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed loud enough to wake up the whole village.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SAKURA-CHAN!"

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She is waking up now, the soft yellow light coming from the corridor strikes her face and bothers her eyes. The soft shuffling of feet by the door shakes her from her torpor, and she cranes her neck to peek over her husband's shoulder at the source of disturbance. He wakes up too, of course he does, nothing ever escapes his instincts, but he chooses to squeeze his eyes shut and burry his face in the pillow, grumbling about having to work in the morning and wanting to sleep. It amuses her that he can act like such an old man when they are barely thirty. Soon, her daughter's small frame comes into vision, dancing on her place and glancing inside the room anxiously, as if in doubt to enter or not. She disentangles herself from her husband's arms and sits up, opening her arms towards the little girl, who runs until her, letting the door wide open, to her father's distate.

"What is it, darling?" she asks softly, making room for the child who crawls into her lap and wraps her chubby arms around her neck.

"Is it tomorrow yet, mommy?" her daughter inquires seriously, to her confusion. She smiles slightly and nods.

"Yes, love, I guess it is."

"Then happy birthday, mom."

Her daughter opens the brightest, most adorable smile she had ever seen in her life, dark eyes filling with pride at her accomplishment, sliding off of her lap with a large yawn to nestle against her father's chest and promptly fall back asleep. Her husband's shoulders shake in a chuckle, despite his previous grumpy mood, and as she lies back down, he leans in to kiss her softly, repeating their child's words.

It isn't a big gesture, and it certainly won't erase the sleepless hours at the hospital, all the work that lies on top of her desk, the dangers and worries of the career she chose, or the woes of being a kunoichi, a wife and a mother all rolled into one. But lying there quietly, with her husband and daughter beside her, holding each other close together, sharing warmth, and caring, and _love.._. In that one minute, the world doesn't look like such a bad place afterall.

All is well, and she is happy.

**A/N**: This was rushed and not revised because I wanted to put it up in time for Sakura's birthday and I just have a few minutes, I'll go back and read it over later. Promise. By the way, it was supposed to be a SasuSaku, but you can interpret it pretty much however you want, it's really not vital at all to the story. Tell me what you think!


End file.
